23 December 2013

Emil Bloom and Byron Abbot produced a series of quirky fashion articles for their editorial project. The samples posted here show the layout for print, plus a short video clip of the user journey through the digital version. Their combination of vertical and horizontal scrolling fits the content nicely to create a really engaging flow through the articles.

20 December 2013

The last project of the calendar year for our final year students was an editorial design. For this brief they worked alongside HND Make-Up Artistry students and HND Photography students, to produce original covers and sample spreads for either Dazed + Confused, or ID Magazine. Some of the students chose to work in pairs, splitting up copy, art direction and production duties. The brief also required print layouts to be re-purposed appropriately for iPad using InDesign's Folio Builder.
Some samples below capture the essence of the project.

6 December 2013

We love this inventive take on chess, designed by HNC students Sarah Diver-Lang and Saulius Strebulis. They developed this idea in response to a design-in-context brief - to create a game-based learning tool for student designers.

The project combined packaging, 3D and typography, and the pieces include Gutenberg as King, the Mona Lisa (Dada version) as Queen, Rodchenko as the Rook, and Jonathan Ive as the Knight. The pawns are an uppercase H set in Helvetica. The squares also contain design-related information, which has an accompanying fold-out factsheet.

Check out our 'Project Samples' Pinterest board for samples of other student work from this project.

SAMH (Scottish Association for Mental Health) were in our studio earlier this week to announce the winning pitch from the One Week project, which ran during the first week in November. The project saw our design students working in small teams alongside a mentor on a live project.
SAMH's Jo Anderson explained that they had some very tough choices to make after the pitches - all six projects featured great ideas, interesting strategies and strong presentations.

A runners-up spot was awarded to Team Lewis #2, mentored by Gillian Grant and Gregor Matheson, but the winning pitch came from Team RAPP, who spent a week working at RAPP's Edinburgh office under the watchful eye of their mentor Jen Wood.

This team presented a sophisticated user journey that connected perfectly with the target audience, combining inventive traditional advertising and strong copy with a clever App.

4 December 2013

The Design team picked up a Commendation at the College Development Annual Awards recently. The Awards recognise the talent, skills and achievements of colleges, their staff and learners, and highlights outstanding projects and initiatives taking place in colleges across Scotland.

The Learning & Teaching Award recognises a college that has launched or developed imaginative and creative ideas to improve effectiveness of learning and teaching. Our nomination in that category was for the Induction Programme, an internal mentoring strategy where our NC, HNC and HND groups collaborate on a project during the first week of their respective courses/sessions.

(l/r) Alan Lennon, Alex Gunn, Chris Hughes

One of our longest serving mentors, Alan Lennon (Lennon Design) accompanied tutors Alex Gunn and Chris Hughes, and Vice Principal Julie McCran, to the Raddison Blu in Glasgow for the ceremony, which was hosted by Sally Magnusson.

This completes a hat-trick of awards this year for the course, along with Best Education Event (Highly Commended, Scottish Event Awards), Innovation (Highly Commended, SQA Star Awards).